Lovely to Look At, but that's about it.

Rating: 2/10 (19 April 2002)

First of all, it was nice to see the ship exterior and promenade deck from Fellini's "And the Ship Sails On" once more. Every studio should have its own ship, and the one at Cinecitta is lovely. The overall production design and cinematography of this film are a constant delight.
That being said, this ship gets lost in fog around halfway through, and never finds its way again. As with so many Italian films, this movie is about the grand gesture, but all too often here the gesture is clumsy, badly written or staged, or totally inexplicable. The ballroom piano recital in the rolling storm is a memorable gesture, the playoff with Jelly Roll Morton is phonus bolognus, the closing self-explanation of the main character's life and his vision of heaven is unbearable.
You know something's wrong when, in the opening sequence, a ship filled with immigrants enters New York harbor from the wrong direction, with the Statue of Liberty and the island of Manhattan sliding by in reverse. Did they come in from Albany? Unimportant in itself, this howler shows an autointoxicated disregard for truth in the pursuit of gripping but often unmotivated emotion. This self-indulgence kills the whole film. We are told that Truth is Beauty and Beauty is Truth, but in this movie, one of them is a liar.